ICD-11: Long-Awaited Depathologisation
📚 Today, in the original post, is 25 May. On 25 May 2019, the 72nd World Health Assembly approved the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Eleventh Revision, better known as ICD-11.
📆 This is considered the day on which being transgender was finally depathologised at an international level and removed from the list of “mental disorders”.
🧑🏻⚕️ Ukraine’s Ministry of Health Order No. 703 of 23 April 2025 approved the Operational Plan for Ukraine’s Transition to ICD-11 for 2025–2026.
🇺🇦 Under that plan, ICD-11 was to be fully incorporated into Ukraine’s medical legislation by 2027.
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Is this a victory already? Or…?
Exactly six years before the original post, ICD-11 — the eleventh revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems — was approved at the 72nd World Health Assembly. A month before the post, Ukraine approved an operational plan for switching to the new classification by 2027.
Why is ICD-11 so important?
It is the biggest update to the international classification of diseases in decades, incorporating current knowledge from neuropsychiatry, medicine and social medicine.
Recognising conditions such as complex PTSD and gaming disorder, and changing approaches to forms of neurodivergence, finally allows people to receive appropriate assessment and care.
Why is ICD-11 so important to us?
Being transgender is no longer considered an illness. The outdated diagnosis of “transsexualism” (F64.0) and related diagnoses have been removed from the chapter on mental and behavioural disorders.
Instead, “gender incongruence” (HA60) now appears in a separate category: conditions related to sexual health.
Won’t this block trans people’s access to healthcare?
Depathologisation ≠ demedicalisation.
The new approach will not place trans people outside the healthcare system. It will help remove stigma and avoid additional speculation and restrictions.
Time to celebrate a victory?
Ukraine’s Ministry of Health Order No. 703 of 23 April 2025 is indeed a major breakthrough for the trans community on the path to full depathologisation.
The real battle, however, is still ahead: updating the unified clinical protocol on “Gender Dysphoria”. This protocol determines how, in practice, doctors will — or will not — provide us with healthcare, recognise us and support us.
We have seen how this can go. When the protocol in effect at the time of the post was developed in 2016, it was filled with nonsense, particularly in diagnostics and endocrinology. We are still dealing with the consequences:
- corruption at every stage of transition;
- disregard for non-binary people’s experiences;
- outright dangerous recommendations on hormone replacement therapy.
We will be watching the next steps closely.